“Of course. You can have all of them if you want.”
“I just want this one. My shoes are by my suitcase and my coat is in the closet. Are we going outside?”
“I hope not. It’s so cold!” I forced a smile, trying to appear casual. I opened the closet door and found the jacket. I knelt on the floor and opened the suitcase, finding a heavy sweater on top.
“I want to wear my jeans,” he said, still staring at the photo.
I grabbed a collared shirt, jeans, a pair of socks, and a long-sleeved T-shirt.
“Do you have gloves?”
“On the hook by the door,” he said, throwing off his pajama top and putting on his shirt. “Will I get to say goodbye to Miss Cliff?”
“I hope so. I know she’d like to see you before you go.”
“Is Tennessee close to the mountains? I’ll miss my friends. Especially Todd, he’s funny. He wears red-high tops. I didn’t want to move, but they said it was for my own good.”
“I promise you, I will do everything I can for you to see any of your friends here again. But right now, I want to get you home.”
“What if they don’t want me, once they find out I don’t remember them?” he asked, slipping on his boots.
I wanted so badly to rush over and pull him into my arms. “Hon, we’ve all been waiting to see you for so long, it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t remember.”
“Then why am I here? How did I get here? All everybody says here is that we don’t have memories and they don’t know where we came from. But somebody has to know. Why did it take you so long to find me?”
I reached out and touched his arm. “I didn’t know where you were. Nobody did. And your parents would be here too, but I just figured it out first.”
“Figured out what?” he asked, his sweater now over his head.
“Let’s talk about all that when we get out of here. Can we go now?”
William clearly picked up on my nervousness. “I’m not supposed to leave my room, you know.”
“Well, Miss Cliff told me where you would be. She knew I had to get to you. Should we go see her?” I asked, hating the lie.
“Sure,” he shrugged.
“Let’s go quietly.” I put my hand on his back and carefully opened the door.
I led him out and we began to walk down the hall. With each door we passed, I fought the urge to grab him and run. He was coming willingly; I couldn’t do anything to spook him. I didn’t even dare hold his hand, although I wanted to desperately. I could see the sign for the staircase. We could be down to the first floor and out the door to the tunnel in a few minutes’ time. Roxy must have made the call by now, and Tom knows that William is here. I did put my hand on his back, hoping the gesture would move his little legs faster. All we had to do was make it down—
“Mrs. Roseworth.”
I closed my eyes. William quickly turned around, but I didn’t need to. I recognized the voice.
TWENTY
The woman who I thought was my husband’s press secretary, who once sat in my own kitchen giving us political advice, who then showed up in the FBI’s raid of Steven’s hotel room, was now wearing a black suit.
Deanna Ruck had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, just as she had when she drove me from the Murfreesboro motel back to Nashville. Walking up briskly behind her were two men dressed in white scrubs.
“Please let us go,” I whispered, placing my hands on William’s shoulders.
“I wish I could, Mrs. Roseworth,” she said. “Hi Alan. We haven’t met. But you know Josh and Rick. Josh is going to take you back to your room.”
“But this lady says she’s my grandma.” He looked up at me. “She showed me pictures of my family. She says my name is William.”
“I understand it’s confusing,” Deanna said with a sympathetic smile. “Tell you what: I need to talk to Mrs. Roseworth first, and then when we’re done, we’ll try to come to see you. OK?”
“Just let us go.” I pulled William close. “I swear to you, I won’t say anything.”
“Mrs. Roseworth, you’re only making this more difficult.”
“She said my name is William,” he grumbled with a sullen tone, pressing up against me.
It was that movement that made me grab William’s hand and run for the door. As I seized the door handle, a strong grip clamped down on my arm. I tried to pull away, but the man held tight, closing the door with his other hand. The other tore William from my grasp.
“William!” I cried out, trying to yank my arm free, knowing the strength of the man would leave bruises.
“I’ll come for you!” I struck out, trying to peel away from his grip. “Let me go!”
As I struggled, I saw William lift his hand towards me, his eyes wide with confusion, as he was carried back into his room.
“Right in there.” Deanna motioned to a door across the hall. With a good one hundred pounds on me, the man led me with ease, despite my attempts to wrestle away. He opened the door and sat me down in a swivel chair resting by a row of file cabinets. Shelves lined the walls, filled with thick plastic binders.
“Give us a few minutes,” she said, following us in. The man at last let go, giving me a stern look as he walked out.
“How can you be doing this?” I exploded, rubbing my wrist. “You know William’s alive! You know he’s my grandson! I thought you were an FBI agent! You’re supposed to be protecting people like us—”
“That’s exactly what I am doing, ma’am. There’s only one person responsible for this situation, and it’s you. I told you back in Tennessee to let this go. I told you what could happen. When we’d learned you and your friend suddenly decided to skip town in the midst of your family’s worst tragedy, I knew you’d disregarded my counsel.
“I suppose I should be grateful to that teenager in the airport terminal who tweeted out that he saw you. We’ve been monitoring all social media for you. He took one photo of you walking away, but failed to earn even a single retweet from his seven followers, or everyone would know you’re here. That tweet, by the way, no longer exists anywhere, in case you thought someone in your family might find it. We had to fly a helicopter through that storm to get to you. Do you know how dangerous that was? Just to come and find you? I don’t know how much Dr. Richards told you about Argentum, but you really made a mistake coming here.”
“Made a mistake? What kind of person are you? You have seen yourself what this has done to my family. And you’re telling me it was a mistake to come find him?”
“It was a mistake because what your family will now have to go through.”
“And what does that mean?”
She pulled up another swivel chair and sat down, leaning forward. “Because you can’t go home now, Mrs. Roseworth. I wish you could, believe me. I don’t want to see your family suffer any more. I don’t know ultimately what my superiors will decide, but I do know with certainty that some sort of story will have to be arranged—”
“I promise you, I will say nothing about what I’ve seen.”
Her lips pursed in a frown. “Really? You’ll just show up with your grandson and not explain where you found him? And you just won’t ever explain why he doesn’t have a memory? This is why we go to extraordinary lengths, such as keeping this facility secluded in this godforsaken corner of the world and blocking it from Google maps and internet searches; to avoid exactly the kind of situation we are in now.”
Deanna reached down and pulled out a laptop from the satchel she’d been carrying. She tapped on the rectangle below the keyboard and turned the screen to face me. She touched the play button and frantic green pulses raced across the screen.
“Please listen.”
She turned up the volume, and at first all I could hear was rustling. Then, my own voice. “You know nothing about my life.”